Subject: [OPE-L:1840] Marx and the Iron Law of Wages
From: Gerald Levy (glevy@PRATT.EDU)
Date: Sun Dec 05 1999 - 11:17:06 EST
A parenthetical question that comes to mind after reading Paul Z's
[OPE-::1839]: Who was the original writer to identify Marx with the "Iron
Law of Wages"? Was it Lassalle himself?
It seems odd that Marx's understanding of wages has been so often
(mis-)identified with the "iron law of wages" since Marx at various times
and places, including in _Capital_, attacked and condemned that law.
Indeed on this question, he was very clear and unambiguous. E.g. in the
1875 "Critique of a Gotha Programme", he wrote:
[Warning: long passage follows!, JL]
[Responding to a section of the programme that called for, in
part, "the abolition of the wage system *together with the iron
law of wages*..., JL] "So, in future, the German workers' party
has got to believe in Lassalle's 'iron law of wages'! That this
may not be lost, the nonsense is perpetuated of speaking of the
'abolition of the wage system' (it should read: system of wage
labour) '*together with* the iron law of wages.' If I abolish
wage-labour, then naturally I abolish its laws also, whether
they are of 'iron' or sponge. But Lassalle's attack on
wage-labour turns almost solely on this so-called law. In order,
therefore, to prove that Lassalle's sect has conquered, the 'wage
system' must be abolished '*together with* the iron law of
wages' and not without it.
It is well known that nothing of the 'iron law of wages' is
Lassalle's except the word 'iron' borrowed from Goethe's 'great,
eternal iron laws.' The word *iron* is a label by which the true
believers recognize one another. But if I take the law with
Lassalle's stamp on it and, consequently, in his sense, then I
must also take with it his substantiation for it. And what is
that? As Lange already showed, shortly after Lassalle's death,
it is the Malthusian theory of population (preached by Lange
himself). But if this theory is correct, then again I *cannot*
abolish the law even if I abolish wage labour a hundred times
over, because the law then governs not only the system of wage
labour but *every* social system. Basing themselves directly on
this, the economists have been proving for fifty years and more
that socialism cannot abolish poverty, *which has its basis in
nature*, but can only make it *general*, distribute it
simultaneously over the whole surface of society!
But all this is not the main thing. *Quite apart* from the
*false* Lassallean formulation of the law, the truly outrageous,
retrogression consists in the following:
Since Lassalle's death there has asserted itself in *our* party
the scientific understanding that wages are not what they
*appear* to be, namely, the *value*, or *price*, of *labour*,
but only a masked form for the *value*, or *price*, of *labour
power*. Thereby the whole bourgeois conception of wages hitherto,
as well as all the criticism hitherto directed against this
conception, was thrown overboard once for all and it was made
clear that the wage-worker has permission to work for his own
subsistence, that is, *to live*, only in so far as he works for a
certain time gratis for the capitalist (and hence for the
latter's co-consumers of surplus value); that the whole
capitalist system of production turns on the increase of this
gratis labour by extending the working day or by developing the
productivity, that is, increasing the intensity of labour
power, etc.; that, consequently, the system of wage labour is a
system of slavery, and indeed of a slavery which becomes more
severe in proportion as the social productive forces of labour
develop, whether the worker receives better or worse payment. And
after this understanding has gained more and more ground in our
Party, one returns to Lassalle's dogmas although one must have
known that Lassalle *did not know* what wages were, but following
in the wake of the bourgeois economists took the appearance
for the essence of the matter.
It is as if, among slaves who have at last got beyond the
secret of slavery and broken out in rebellion, a slave still in
thrall to obsolete notions were to inscribe on the programme of
the rebellion: Slavery must be abolished because the feeding of
slaves in the system of slavery cannot exceed a certain low
maximum!" ("Critique of a Gotha Programme" in _Selected Works_,
Volume 3, pp. 22-24, emphasis in original).
So how is that Marx's theory came to be identified with the "iron law of
wages"?
I also wonder: to what extent does Lassalle's "iron law of wages" in
fact rely on a Malthusian concept of population? Have any of us actually
read Lassalle's writings to suggest an answer to this question?
In solidarity, Jerry
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